Wall Painting Conservation

In a highly progressive move, the Orissa Government, through its Project Orissa Cell, joined hands with INTACH ICCI to conserve their wall painting sites and conservation work on the wall painting sites were undertaken.These early 20th century paintings were suffering from extensive flaking and abrasion of paint layers. Huge chunks of painted plaster adhering weakly to the walls was falling off. Heavy deposits of soot over the paint layers, damaged paint layer due to unplanned installation of electric fittings on the paintings etc were the other problems. These paintings would have been lost forever in a few years had the centre not taken up their conservation. The paintings were documented, the flaking paint consolidated, bulging, loose plaster was reattached to the walls, losses were filled, darkened soot deposits were cleaned, electric fittings were removed. A new method for reattaching loose plaster with negligible harm to the paintings or the plaster, was introduced by the experts of the center which was called the ‘Veiled Technique for reattaching dangerously loose plaster’.

Biranchi Narain Matha, Buguda

Jagannath Temple, Dharakote

Radhakanta Matha, Ottorkera

Projects on conservation of wall paintings supported by Norwegian Agency for Development :